AlterGold is under DDoS-attack. How long will the system be down?

On August 15 one of the youngest and one of the most aggressive processors of the today’s online payment market – AlterGold have surprised its customers. However, surprise was rather bitter, or it’s better to say that it was really a shock, rather than a surprise: the site was down.

Interestingly enough but the first though that came to the mind was: Altergold is a scam!!! They have stolen all the money and ran away… Curiously enough but the system, which usually worries about its reputation and makes a splash in press covering every minor step or action, this time was silent. Meanwhile, the phrase: Unable to Connect with Database Host was making all the customers crazy. All the forums were boosting with the posts like this:

i´m a little bit afraid now. in some threads here in forum people discussing about that altergold is maybe scam. now the site is down.

Only later the admins was pleased to announce its customers about the reason of the site outage by posting the following:

Dear Customer,

We regret to inform you that the AlterGold website is currently under DDOS attack at this moment.

All efforts are in place to bring the site back online as soon as possible. We apologize for any inconvenience caused by this interruption to service.

Regards,
AlterGold Management

The effect was unexpected. The customers haven’t calmed down; on the contrary the flame was kindled. People started guessing why the developing and the promising system that was pretending to replace e-gold and the wounded eBullion was down. Let’s try to guess as well: The system that is down for several hours probably have a weak protection. The weak protection means the lack of financing. Considering the money spent by AG for the advertisement we cannot say that they are weak, so here another idea suggests itself: altergold simply doesn’t want to spend the money for a good hoster as it doesn’t care for the security of its customers for whom the security of the system was a primary meaning. However, the users have another point of view:

If there were under ddos atttack, then you wouldn't see that message (because the server would crash).

Even I didn't expect them to run away with the money that soon.

The same time we are interested why the official blog of Altergold is keeping mum as well. The last update of the site was on July 24, 2008. And it is very strange as the primary function of the any blog is to provide the information. Or, may be the admins think that website outage is a minor problem and it not worth to be covered? Very unpleasant situation indeed, and the complete lack of any information is just killing… So, what is it? Ddos attack and the admins neglect or a daring scam? At the moment we can say nothing just to guess.